Wednesday, March 23, 2011

BACKSTORY: One night, Sarah and her lovely designated driver friend, M, were leaving a questionable club in a questionable town. Sarah was having more trouble walking in a straight line than her lovely friend. As they were leaving, Mr Adder called out goodbye to them. Sarah, sensing an opportunity to talk to somebody new, dragged M over. Mr Adder and Sarah chatted, whilst M tried to subtly indicate the lateness of the hour.

DIALOGUE: “M, check it out! He has GUNS! Are you Irish? You look Irish… Why did you say goodbye? Yeah, I thought you were Irish.”

TIME: A week or two later (later date to be indicated by pages of a calendar flipping).

SCENE: Student-style cheap Thai restaurant.

THE DATE: Having already explained that this particular restaurant had been chosen as a date venue because of its appeal to uni students on shoestring budgets, Mr Adder wined and dined Sarah (wine to be replaced with watered-down imitation Coca Cola). Mr Adder proceeded to tell Sarah about his passion for animals, specifically snakes. He also told her about himself. A lot. More than she cared to know. Sarah didn’t feel the need to speak – there wasn’t a break long enough in the conversation anyway.

Lunching finished, they went for a drive. Mr Adder took Sarah to his favourite local snake catching spots. Sarah attempted to show interest in Mr Adder’s passion, but was secretly thinking about what she’d cook for dinner. Probably 2-minute noodles. Might steam some vegies.

LATER: They pulled up on the side of a road in the bush, Mr Adder having explained that this was a great area to catch *insert name of deadly snake here*. Mr Adder ambled into the bush, and Sarah stood by the car, nervously smoking and wondering how long it would take to walk back to her car. After a minute, Mr Adder called from the bush.

“Got one!” he exclaimed.

“Oh shit”, thought Sarah.

Mr Adder walked back into view, clutching a specimen of the aforementioned dangerous snake variety. It was flailing and biting his jeans. He appeared not to notice, and kept walking towards Sarah. Sarah continued smoking.

“Look at this one! It’s so FEISTY! I haven’t seen one this feisty before…” he said.

“Uh……..”

“Come and look at it! Have you seen a snake this close before?”

“It seems to be biting you.”

“So FEISTY!”

“Can you say crikey?”

“CRIKEY!”

“Haha….. um…….”

“I’m going to have to take this back to the uni. I’ve never seen one this feisty before. She just keeps going! Look, she’s biting me! Can you check in the back of the car for a sack?”

So Sarah, panicking and rifling through his car, found a sack and went to walk towards him. She stopped suddenly, realising that her thongs and skirt weren’t appropriate snake wrangling clothes. Nor was she an appropriate snake wrangler.

She attempted a girly throw, and the sack landed on the barbed wire fence separating them. Mr Adder came forward, and tried to put the snake into the sack. The snake, feisty and pissed off, did not comply. Over the course of a couple of minutes, Mr Adder and the snake engaged in a battle of the wits (the snake gaining the upper hand all too often). Sarah wondered if hitchhiking was really all that dangerous. It was daylight, surely it would be fine.

Having gotten the snake to submit to his will, Mr Adder walked towards the car, and found some cord to tie the sack up with. Mr Adder placed the bag behind the passenger seat in the car (indeed, the seat that Sarah would have to sit in, in order to get back). They drove back to Sarah’s car, with Sarah sure that something kept brushing up against her elbow, and not knowing which was more worrying – the possibility that it was the snake, or the possibility that it was Mr Adder.

MORAL OF THE STORY: In light of my social experimentation (online dating), I may possibly go on a date at some stage. A real-life date. With people and stuff. If the date seems to be going badly, I’m not going to settle for a mediocre bad date. If you’re going down, go for broke and go down in flames, clutching snakes and screaming about cheap food. Unless you top that story, I will not be impressed.

THE END

PLEASE NOTE: This sparkling, romantic moment actually happened a couple of years ago. This is not a recent event - I've had time to work my way through the trauma, and no longer get Vietnam-type flashbacks if I hear somebody say "Crikey!".

Saturday, March 19, 2011

It’s been just over 3 weeks since I joined *insert generic internet dating site here*, and so far it’s been interesting. I’m learning things not only about others, but about myself as well. Granted, they’re things like the fact that I find it difficult to take people seriously when they start a conversation with the words, “So, you’re really hot.” I take pity on them – of course I’ve uploaded the better photos of me. And of course I’ve taken care to put a photoshop action on it so that my complexion appears slightly smoother than it otherwise would. You should see me right now, sitting here in my daggy around-the-house shorts, and my bed hair, with yesterday’s makeup smudged underneath my eyes. See how you like them apples.

I’m up to the stage where I’ve perused numerous profiles (and wondering why this website matched me up with somebody with the words “Aussie pride” in their screen name. Ew, ew, ew, no.) and I’m chatting to people on a regular basis.

I’ve realised that my sense of humour (I’m using that term loosely) doesn’t necessarily translate well onto on-screen chatting, ie. I don’t think things through before typing and hitting enter. For example, there’s a lovely person that I’ve been chatting to. I’m rather enjoying these chats. In an effort to get to know him better, I’m asking questions such as his hobbies, favoured meals, and his surname. When he showed reticence towards telling me his surname, I asked if he’d been stalked before. He answered in the affirmative, and I proceeded to make jokes about stalkers, following it with, “…Not that I’M a stalker. Ahahahaha.”

Likewise, there are things that other people do that I don’t appreciate. Like I mentioned in one of the last blog posts, I’ve come across a few people fishing for compliments. “What do you think of my profile pic?” To this I’m just tempted to answer that I think they should have chosen a better background than their bathroom tiles. Or that if they think they’re conveying a pensive face, they actually look like they’ve recently sustained bodily harm.

Also, don’t make fun of me because I sew. Make fun of me because I scrapbook, sure, but leave the sewing out of it. I don’t make fun of you for being a douche.

It’s getting to the point where a couple of people have mentioned possibly meeting up at some point (and not even in a hotel room – I AM a lucky girl), but I am yet to have a face-to-face encounter. I look forward to this, if for no other reason than to have another bad date anecdote to astound my friends with. I like to entertain others.

Monday, March 14, 2011

I’ve been struck down with a nasty version of the common cold, and yesterday I was sure that death was soon to come knocking at my door. I spent the day in bed, alternately coughing, cursing and whimpering, and just generally feeling very sorry for myself (in other words, woeing my boat).

I now realise that I may have been a tad hasty with the prediction of my untimely demise. It still sucked though.

Saturday was a great day, with a few less of our regular stallholders than usual, but a good vibe nonetheless. I got my hat finished in time for the dress-up theme (March Hare and the Mad Hatter), with only a couple of technical difficulties on the day (I think I pretty much ended up gluing the hat to my head). I looked a little less like the Mad Hatter, and a bit more like a deranged circus ringmaster than I’d hoped, but I think that people got the idea.

I also had the pleasure of taking care of Michelle’s stall this time, as she’s gone on a caravanning trip with the family (lucky gal). When I was unpacking her stuff, it was like a magic trick – every time I thought I’d grabbed the bulk of the stuff from the boxes, I’d find more. The woman is a machine.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

I have so much news. So, so much news. I was going to break all of this up into separate posts, but the lazy in me scored the upper hand, so you’ll just have to deal with me talking crap for a little while. Or not read the whole blog post. Whatever.

First things first – I got a job. And no-one was more surprised than me. The job interview was one of those that you walk out of, as gracefully as you can, but on the inside you’re berating yourself, and your hand is itching to connect with your forehead. I didn’t think that I’d answered questions as well as I could, and I’d generally made a bit of a tool of myself. Afterwards, I considered doing a blog post about things to avoid in job interviews (What? You mean it’s been done before?!?), but I was too ashamed. Now, seeing as I actually somehow got the job, I have a few little tips.

I have long legs (yes, this is related… just keep reading). Don’t get me wrong. I like my legs – they’ve come in really handy for walking and stuff. However, they can become a troublesome thing on public transport, and when I sit at tables at cafes and restaurants and job interviews. There’s just not enough room under the table for me to sit comfortably. I spent the interview twitching and shifting, and trying to get comfortable – it didn’t work, but may have given the interview panel that I’d taken some illicit drugs.

Hand shaking. I am a hand shaker when the mood crosses me, and I know all of that stuff about how to shake hands, using the correct pressure, etc. The bit that I DIDN’T think through was the position of people in the room. I shook the hands of the first 2 members of the panel, and then realised that in order to shake the hand of the third, I would have to walk behind everybody and approach her from the back, which made things awkward for both of us. Upon the realization of my faux pas, I started walking in this hunkered down, crab crawl-type gait. I was thinking that it was probably one of the more unimpressive things that I’d ever done, but maybe they dug it. Who knows? The moral of this story is to think of placement. Location, location, location.

Secondly, the March Made With Love Market Bazaar is happening THIS WEEKEND! I’ve done so very little for it, but I know other people have actually been constructive. We ran a competition on our facebook page for this market, so that one of our followers could come up with the dress-up theme for it. We had some great entries, and the winner is “MARCH Hare, and The Mad Hatter”. We’re all a bit excited about the possibilities of this one. The winner will receive a vintage suitcase full of Made With Love goodies worth over $200. We’ll be running another competition in July, so if you’re interested in scoring some rad stuff, keep an eye on our facebook page.

I started making my hat for the market the other night at Stitch ‘N’ Bitch, and it seems to be going pretty well… Somehow I just guessed measurements and everything, and it seemed to come together. It made me realise that one of the most painful assignments from my TAFE days (making 3D letter using cardboard and glue and lots and lots of tabs) actually put me in good stead for making a top hat. Go figure.

Ridiculous TAFE assignment

I’ve been getting my papercraft on lately, and have done a scrapbooking layout for Allana, demonstrating how radtacular her fabric tape is. She’s made it from lovely vintage fabrics, and it’s self-adhesive so it’s really easy to use!

I’ve also made some cards for the markets.

And as of this week, I’m a fully fledged Tasmanian driver. I already had my Tassie driver’s license, and now I have the license plates to prove it. It was actually a bit of a sentimental moment when I took my ever so slightly crumpled New South Wales plate to swap over. But it’s the start of a new driving chapter. My car no longer gets egged on a regular basis, I’m not getting tailgated nearly as much, and she’s actually clean at the moment. Love it.

Quick update on online dating: Dear random toolbag, I am not here to stroke your ego. Please stop fishing for compliments, as I will shut you down in a heartbeat. Kind regards, Sarahla.

I Am...

A twenty-something currently living on the North-West coast of Tasmania. I indulge in a certain amount of craftiness, well-intended rambling, and too much coffee. My name is Sarah - welcome to my world.